Four reply comments for Anne Pemberton:

* I see what you mean about the women in the picture, and I apologize for
my dim failure to engage that obvious dimension in my long blathering. I
think you're right about that. (Some in this forum might know Ms. Gerri
Hollins, who descends from Contrabands in Hampton, and who founded the
Contraband Historical Society. She's a vice president of our Fort Monroe
preservation group -- and I'll bet she'd rightly fault me for my
thoughtless oversight.)

* You mentioned "white guilt." It seems to me that that's part of the mix,
but that more importantly, people of good will really do wish to accord a
little bit of dignity retrospectively if they -- if we -- somehow can.
That is, it seems to me that generosity of spirit towards Sally Hemings,
and towards others whom she might symbolize -- and towards
self-emancipators too -- stems more from a worthy love of justice than
from any need for penitence.

* You mentioned an invitation "to honor the slaves who self-emancipated
via Fort Monroe." I myself hate to call Baker, Mallory, and Townsend
"slaves" when discussing the time after they stood up, escaped
enslavement, and found sanctuary at the Union bastion in Confederate
Virginia. At that point, in my opinion, they had seized the status that
should freely have been theirs all along: not slave, but American. So I'd
rather say it this way: I invite others to honor the Americans who
self-emancipated via Fort Monroe.

* There's plenty that people can do to save Fort Monroe even if they can't
contribute money. The single most important force in saving Fort Monroe is
the public will, which, for over two years now, Governor Kaine and others
have semi-successfully semi-ignored -- but which has nevertheless led to
the gains that we've been able to make. Anyone who signs up (as I believe
you, Anne, already did) for e-mail updates at the "subscribing" link at
http://www.cfmnp.org/ will hear about speaking-up opportunities from time
to time. There'll be two such opportunities in the next two weeks, in
fact. (We ask only for e-addresses and no other information, we don't
share the e-addresses with anybody else, and we don't bombard our
subscribers -- though a cluster of at least three update messages will be
coming out in the next ten days or so.)

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